Attribute Schema Library
Attribute schemaindustrial MRO

Abrasives Attributes

Abrasives covers bonded wheels (Type 1 and Type 41 cut-off, Type 27 depressed-center grinding), coated products (sheets, rolls, belts, fiber discs, flap discs), non-woven surface conditioning, superabrasives (diamond, CBN), and blasting media. Buyers are welders, fabricators, maintenance techs and tool-crib managers. It is a consumable with high repeat volume, and every purchase is gated by the machine it mounts on.

The data is hard for three reasons. Grit runs on two incompatible scales — FEPA-P (ISO 6344) and CAMI (ANSI B74.18) — that agree at coarse grades and diverge above 220, so a bare "320" is ambiguous. The real spec lives in a marking string on the wheel label (A36-N-BF) and in PDF selection charts, not in structured fields. And variants multiply: grain x grit x diameter x thickness x arbor x type number turns one flap disc family into hundreds of SKUs.

Two attributes here are safety-gating rather than marketing: maximum operating speed and, for resinoid-bonded wheels, the expiry date.

Core

Every SKU needs these. Without them the record is not a product, it is a row.

Abrasive Product Type
enum
Depressed-center grinding wheel

Top-level facet that gates every other spec. A cut-off wheel and a flap disc share a diameter and share nothing else.

Abrasive Grain / Mineral
enum
Zirconia alumina

Sets cut rate, heat and workpiece fit. Ceramic and zirconia cut cool on stainless; silicon carbide is for stone, glass and non-ferrous.

Grit Size
identifier
P80

The primary filter on every coated abrasive. Useless unless the grading scale is stored alongside it — a bare number is ambiguous above 220.

Diameter
number · in
4-1/2 in (115 mm)

Must match the machine and its guard. 4-1/2 in and 5 in grinders take different discs and different guards.

Thickness
number · in
0.045 in (1.2 mm)

Separates cutting from grinding. A 0.045 in wheel cuts; a 1/4 in wheel grinds. Buyers filter on it directly.

Arbor Hole / Mount Thread
enum
7/8 in (22.23 mm)

Hard fit gate. A 7/8 in plain hole and an M14 x 2 threaded hub are not interchangeable and must not share one enum.

Maximum Operating Speed
number · rpm
13,300 rpm

Must equal or exceed the grinder's no-load speed. ANSI B7.1 makes this the buyer's check, so the catalog has to state it.

Wheel Type Number
enum
Type 27

Defines profile and working angle. Type 27 blends flat at 5-15 degrees; Type 29 is conical for aggressive stock removal.

Manufacturer Part Number
identifier
66261119221 (Norton)

The number the buyer has on the empty box. Cross-reference and reorder both run on it.

Differentiating

What buyers actually compare on. This is where catalogs win or lose the filter.

Backing / Substrate
enum
Vulcanized fiber

Sets flexibility and tear resistance. Vulcanized fiber takes fiber-disc pressure; film gives a flat wet-sanding surface; paper will not survive either.

Attachment / Mount Type
enum
Roloc TR quick-change

How the abrasive fastens to the tool. Hook-and-loop, PSA and Roloc quick-change are mutually exclusive fits at the same diameter.

Bonded Wheel Spec Code
identifier
A36-N-BF

The ANSI marking string. Parsed into grain, grit, grade, structure and bond it becomes five facets; stored as text it is unsearchable.

Workpiece Material
enum
Stainless steel (304/316)

How buyers actually shop. Stainless, carbon steel, aluminium, concrete and non-ferrous each rule out grains and rule in others.

Belt Joint Type
enum
Butt (tape), bi-directional

Butt/tape joints run bi-directional; lap joints run one way only, marked by an arrow inside the belt. A lap belt mounted backwards snags and tears.

Compliance & identifiers

Standards, regulatory data, and the identifiers channels reject you for missing.

Contaminant-Free (Fe/S/Cl)
boolean
Yes — <0.1% Fe, S, Cl

Required for stainless, food, pharma and architectural work. Free iron, sulfur and chlorine disrupt the passive chromium layer and the weld rusts.

Safety Standard Conformance
text
EN 12413; oSa certified

Bonded abrasives are speed-rated parts that can burst. Site specs and audits ask for the standard and the oSa mark by name.

Country of Origin
identifier
Germany

Drives duty, and government and defense contracts screen on it before they look at the spec.

GTIN-13 / UPC
identifier
4007220123456

Required by marketplaces and by GDSN. No GTIN, no listing, and no match against the customer's ERP item master.

The fields that aren't in the schema at all

What most abrasives catalogs are missing.

The table above is the schema most catalogs already have. These are the attributes that usually aren't in it — each one surfaced by a signal from the live market rather than by an audit of what's already there. This is what Anglera's Schema Foundry does on a real catalog, in this category.

Supplier signal
+ Expiry Date / Date of Manufacture

EN 12413 requires resinoid-bonded wheels for hand-held machines to carry an MM/YYYY expiry on the label or metal ring. Distributor catalogs list the wheel but expose no manufacture or expiry field.

Buyer cannot tell fresh stock from shelf-aged stock before it ships. Slow-moving bonded stock ages past its marked date in the rack and is scrapped, not sold.

Supplier signal
+ Grit Grading Scale (FEPA-P vs CAMI)

Catalogs store a bare grit number. Supplier datasheets label the same product P320 or 320 depending on the plant. Above 220 those are different products, and nothing in the record says which shipped.

Refinish and metallography buyers working to a micron spec get the wrong particle size. Cross-references built between two suppliers' lines are silently wrong.

Competitor signal
+ Backing Weight

Specialist abrasive houses publish backing weight (J, X, Y-weight cloth; A through F paper) on every datasheet and expose it on their filter rails. Most MRO catalogs bury it in the description.

A J-weight belt picked for heavy stock removal tears; an X-weight picked for contour work will not conform. Both come back as returns.

Search signal
+ Free Silica Content

Buyers search 'silica free blast media' and 'less than 1% free silica' because of the OSHA respirable crystalline silica rule. Catalogs list media type but carry no silica content field.

Site safety specs reject the quote outright. The RFQ moves to a supplier who can state the number, and the whole blasting media basket goes with it.

Competitor signal
+ Grinding Aid / Stearate Coating

Specialist filter rails expose 'stearated' or 'anti-clog' as a facet. Most MRO catalogs have no such field even though the datasheet names the grinding aid.

Stearated discs are wrong ahead of paint or clear coat — stearate transfer causes fisheye. The wrong pick means the finish job is stripped and redone.

How Schema Foundry finds these

Messy in, governed out.

The same value, spelled every way industrial MRO suppliers spell it. A filter only works once they agree.

Grit Size
80P8080 GritGrit 80K8080#
P80 (FEPA-P, ISO 6344)

Coarse grades align across scales, but CAMI 320 is roughly P400 and CAMI 600 roughly P1200. Store the number and the scale separately.

Arbor Hole / Mount Thread
7/87/8 in.0.875"22.23mm22mm7/8" Arbor
7/8 in (22.23 mm) plain hole

22 mm and 22.23 mm are the same hole. M14 x 2 is a thread, not a hole, and must never collapse into this enum.

Abrasive Grain
ZircZirconiaAlumina ZirconiaZirconium OxideZA
Zirconia alumina

'Zirconium oxide' is chemically wrong for this grain but suppliers ship it. One term makes the grain filter usable.

Attachment Type
Hook & LoopH&LVelcroHookitStikitPSA
Hook and loop

Hookit and Stikit are 3M brand names: Hookit is hook and loop, Stikit is PSA. Mapping Stikit here ships an unmountable disc.

What buyers ask

Every one of these should be answerable from the attributes above. If it isn't, that's a gap.

  • Will this fit my grinder — 7/8 in hole or M14 x 2 thread?
  • Is this wheel rated above my grinder's no-load speed?
  • Is this contaminant-free for 316 stainless, or will the weld rust?
  • Is the 320 on this sheet CAMI or P320?
  • How old is this wheel — what date is on the label?
  • Type 27 or Type 29 for blending a weld at 15 degrees?
  • Does this belt only run in one direction?
  • Is this media under 1% free silica for the OSHA rule?

What channels require

The same SKU, different mandatory fields per destination.

Distributor's own faceted search
Abrasive product typeAbrasive grainGrit size + grading scaleDiameterArbor hole / mount threadMaximum operating speed
Amazon Business
GTIN-12/13BrandManufacturer part numberItem type keywordNumber of itemsCountry of origin
GDSN / 1WorldSync data pool
GTINGPC brick codeBrand owner GLNNet content + UOMCountry of originPackaging hierarchy
Ariba / Coupa punchout (CIF, cXML)
UNSPSC codeManufacturer part numberUnit of measureLead timeShort description

Abrasives data, in practice

Is P80 the same as 80 grit?

At coarse grades, effectively yes. FEPA-P (ISO 6344-2) and CAMI (ANSI B74.18) macrogrits track closely through about 220. Above that they diverge, because FEPA defines a grade as a range of grain sizes while CAMI specifies an average: CAMI 320 is roughly P400, CAMI 600 roughly P1200, CAMI 1200 roughly P2500. So a catalog storing '320' with no scale is genuinely ambiguous, and a number-to-number cross-reference between two suppliers' fine grades will be wrong. Store the grit number and the grading scale as separate governed fields, and where the datasheet gives it, carry mean particle size in µm — micron is the only value that compares across both systems.

Do abrasive wheels expire?

Resinoid-bonded ones do. EN 12413 requires resinoid-bonded wheels for hand-held machines to carry an expiry date no more than three years after manufacture, printed as MM/YYYY on the label or metal ring. The bond is hygroscopic; moisture picked up in storage degrades its strength, which is why these wheels must be stored dry. Vitrified wheels carry no expiry. Most distributor catalogs hold neither a manufacture date nor an expiry field, so the buyer cannot tell whether current stock is being shipped, and rack rotation is invisible until someone finds an out-of-date wheel during an audit.

Which standards actually apply to abrasives?

For safety: ANSI B7.1 (US code for the use, care and protection of abrasive wheels), EN 12413 (bonded abrasives), EN 13236 (superabrasives), EN 13743 (coated, flap and cut-off). oSa is not a standard — it is a certification mark built on those three EN standards. For grit: ISO 6344 (FEPA-P) and ANSI B74.18 (CAMI). For blasting: OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1153 covers respirable crystalline silica. UL, ATEX and NSF do not apply to abrasives; if they appear on a record, they were copied in from another category.

What does A36-N-BF mean?

It is the ANSI marking system. A is the grain — aluminum oxide (C is silicon carbide, Z is zirconia alumina). 36 is the grit. N is the grade: the strength of the bond holding the grain, lettered A (soft) to Z (hard). Grade describes bond hardness, not grain hardness — the most common misread in the category. An optional structure number, roughly 1 (dense) to 14 (open), follows the grade. BF is the bond: resinoid, fiberglass-reinforced (B is plain resinoid, V vitrified, R rubber). Most catalogs paste this string into the description. As one text blob it cannot be filtered; parsed into grain, grit, grade, structure and bond it becomes five working facets.

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